“... the poem a peculiarly static feel, as though something is always on the cusp of being said. That may not be entirely Mirrlees’s fault. The poem begins with an invocation to Harrison; it ends with a private message to her, in the constellation of the Great Bear, picked out in asterisks. The two women referred to each other as the two wives in a ménage à ...”

“... blur such distinctions, but the installation at BAMPFA betrays an anxiety about the way audiences may understand this work, or misunderstand it. Works by non-professional makers – sometimes called ‘self-taught’, ‘outsider’ or ‘outlier’ – have been making their way into art institutions for some time, but Black women artists who work with ...”

“... Why this material instead of stainless steel? One reason – and I say this tentatively – may be that the softer glow of silver suggests something more noble, more ancient, than the steel Ray uses for human animals. If so, this is further support for the notion that shine can express something of the subject’s character. Yet in other instances, it ...”

“... she was writing. The exhibition links these works to Van Gogh with a letter written to Theo on 28 May 1888, in which he sketches a leporello he wished to make for Paul Gauguin and Émile Bernard. But there is an additional link to be made in their use of other artists as sources of both comfort and inspiration. Van Gogh would copy the work of those he admired ...”

“... his right lung was restricting his breathing. His condition deteriorated quickly, and he died in May 1995, at the age of 64. More than 90 per cent of cases of mesothelioma are linked to exposure to asbestos, though the cancer usually develops decades later. Popple was apprenticed as a joiner during the postwar housing boom and would have worked on building ...”

“... exhaled breath into fresh air (as it was then supposed cats could do). Bizarre though they may seem, many of the legends have a kernel of lived experience, a subject touched on in many of the catalogue essays.* In Asia, Alexander did encounter animals that must have seemed monstrous to him, including monkeys that might have appeared like ‘wild ...”

“... more tolerant of snakes, and therefore of dracones, than their successors. Ogden suggests this may have been because they kept rat-snakes, or house-snakes, in order to kill the rodents attracted by grain stores. In Roman mythology, snakes were sometimes thought to be genii locorum, protective deities, and the base-form of Asclepius, the god of healing, was ...”

“... oil wells. The government’s own net zero tsar, Chris Skidmore, has warned that climate targets may be missed because of inconsistent policies and a lack of commitment. Why does the UK have a government which is so reluctant to tackle the problems it has created, and which is so prepared to put party-political interest above national interest? All ...”

“... Terkel’s previous, less jaundiced collections, this one takes shape from a thesis; and one may sometimes wonder whether the oral historian is passing off his own disenchantment with the direction of American society as the representative voice of the country. Terkel himself, moreover, undercuts his own disillusion. Once he has presented his thesis, in ...”

“... anxious for more close-ups and a more minute examination of the Queen’s immediate environment may resent the clutter of political narrative. Tarsicio de Azcona’s 1964 biography retains its place as a mine of factual information and source material. Liss does not take full advantage of the work that has been done on the reign in the ...”

“... the space between the machine and the foreman. By remaining within the idiom of his situation Voss may deny himself more fulsome forms of expression but in so doing he imitates the effacement or denial of personalities by their work-roles. The fit is also more brutally physical. In the poem ‘Victorious’, ‘the janitor’s body’ is ‘stooped’ with the ...”

“... to be your body, and it ought to be your voice. *** The parent helps the child discover what may be done with its lips and its limbs. This is the first poetry. *** A sort of night then falls – a melancholy mercy – after which the initiation is mysteriously forgotten. This is the primal erasure. *** The remainder of our lives is spent in recapturing ...”

“... execution from the Mississippi Governor. He did not succeed, but the documentary Fourteen Days in May, restored the issue of the death penalty to public consciousness, as did the sequel The Journey, which established Johnson’s innocence of the crime for which he had been executed. Thomas adds flesh to the outline traced in the documentaries; a compelling ...”

“... that it is all for the good. But I doubt if anything has changed. The targets of Hughes’s scorn may be reeling now but his analysis remains topical and they will soon be back. The art machine will crank itself up for another round of frenzied business. For it to do otherwise, to shrink, to look about for criteria other than fashion, would be inimical to the ...”

“... arrogant technology has eroded the mystery which is the true basis of religion. The Holy Sepulchre may disappoint some, but for him it is a testimony to the unknowable and to our own insignificance. In my third year at Cambridge a pupil of his at Trinity and myself used to dine with him once a week. I don’t remember him talking much about history. But ...”